Conformity In The 1950's Essay

708 Words3 Pages

Conformity is behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards. Also according to Webster's dictionary social repression is is the act of controlling, subduing or suppressing people, groups and larger social aggregations by interpersonal means. I agree to the greater extent that during the 1950’s were a time of conformity and social repression. In American life housing, genders and culture get an impact on conformity and social repression. For housing it starts with suburbia, william levitt, maker of Levittown, long island uses the Henry Ford method of assembly lines for housing. Levitt creates many cheap look alike houses in a fast period of time, this draws many families to the suburban area. All of the houses look …show more content…

Rock and Roll was a very popular cultural aspect of the 50s. It originated from African American culture then the whites interpreted it. One of the first singers to do this was the very king of rock and roll himself, Elvis Presley. Many adults hated this new music and wanted to ban it. A huge part of it was censored, for example on the Ed Sullivan show, Elvis had to wear a tuxedo and wasn’t allowed to dance because his moves were “sexually inappropriate”. Elvis was repressed from doing what he wanted to do, express himself. Teenagers who listened to this music were seen as juvenile delinquents and it was not socially acceptable from an mature adults point of view. The 1950s were definitely a time of conformity and social repression. The housing in the suburban area was all exactly the same. All of these identical houses with identical built nuclear families lie inside watching their happy sitcoms on their tv. Society had the standards for the men and women and you were seen as different if you changed the way society had for you to live. Many lovers of the rock and roll music were held down by social repression. It may have been seen that people were expressing themselves and trying out new things but in reality everybody was held to be a “clone” like